I am not a fantasy fan at all but through some friends of mine I've been introduced to a new wave of fantasy that does away with all the binding that Tolkien set up in his Lord of the Rings books - this is a good thing, a very good thing indeed. I have gotten tired of the same old cliched fantasy story lines over the decades that I stopped reading fantasy all together. But these writers have completely renewed my faith in the fantasy genre by focusing on characters: Jim Butchers, George R. R. Martin, and Brandon Sanderson. Now I can add to this list Robin Hobb.
This book is completely characters driven and reads like Charles Dickens writing a fantasy novel. It reminded me of David Copperfield - that is by no means a bad thing because her writing so much so captured what Dickens did with his books that it made reading fantasy novel a joy. Her writing was very easy on the brain and she had a great control of the pacing of the story, just when a plot thread or situation had reached its conclusion or I was starting to get bored Hobb introduced some some to keep me reading.
The one complaint I have from this book is that I've become used to world building on a great scale with Martin, Butcher, and Sanderson that I found her world building on a rather small scale. But her detailed writing of the main character Fritz helped to not make this lack of world building an issue with me. His character was so well done that I am looking forward to reading the rest of this trilogy and stories she's created about Fritz.
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